inted so plainly there.
"Dear" and "darling" were too terribly intimate for them to achieve
quickly; and, unlike most mating couples, they did not overwork the love-
words. For a long time they were content to walk together in the
evenings, or to sit side by side on a bench in the park, neither uttering
a word for an hour at a time, merely gazing into each other's eyes, too
faintly luminous in the starshine to be a cause for self-consciousness
and embarrassment.

He was as chivalrous and delicate in his attention as any knight to his
lady. When they walked along the street, he was careful to be on the
outside,--somewhere he had heard that this was the proper thing to
do,--and when a crossing to the opposite side of the street put him on
the inside, he swiftly side-stepped behind her to gain the outside again.
He carried her parcels for her, and once, when rain threatened, her
umbrella. He had never heard of the custom of sending flowers to one's
lady-love, so he sent Genevieve fruit instead. There was utility in
fruit. It was good to eat. Flowers never entered his mind, until, one
day, he noticed a pale rose in her hair. It drew his gaze again and
again. It was _her_ hair, therefore the presence of the flower
interested him. Again, it interested him because _she_ had chosen to put
it there. For these reasons he was led to observe the rose more closely.
He discovered that the effect in itself was beautiful, and it fascinated
him. His ingenuous delight in it was a delight to her, and a new and
mutual love-thrill was theirs--because of a flower. Straightway he
became a lover of flowers. Also, he became an inventor in gallantry. He
sent her a bunch of violets. The idea was his own. He had never heard
of a man sending flowers to a woman. Flowers were used for decorative
purposes, also for funerals. He sent Genevieve flowers nearly every day,
and so far as he was concerned the idea was original, as positive an
invention as ever arose in the mind of man.

He was tremulous in his devotion to her--as tremulous as was she in her
reception of him. She was all that was pure and good, a holy of holies
not lightly to be profaned even by what might possibly be the too ardent
reverence of a devotee. She was a being wholly different from any he had
ever known. She was not as other girls. It never entered his head that
she was of the same clay as his own sisters, or anybody's sister. She
was more than mere girl, t